3. The Lego Movie Instead Of Literally Any Of The Competition - Best Animation
It's not that it's necessarily a bad year for Oscar's Animation category. In fact, the overall critical approval rating for the five nominated for Animated Feature Film - that would be Big Hero 6, The Boxtrolls, How to Train Your Dragon 2, Song of the Sea and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya - is high. But not included in that list is one of the very best films of the year, and the movie which, it was assumed, would be Oscar's animated winner in 2015: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's The Lego Movie. This was a movie about toys working on so many levels that even the Guardian forgot it'd been cooked up to sell Scandinavian building blocks and subsequently included it in their top ten films of 2014 list. It has been suggested that the humour of The Lego Movie was too contemporary to make sense to the majority of Oscar voters, who overall have a median age of 62 (basically think Mickey Rourke trying to enjoy this film and you get the idea). And sure, it's difficult to imagine a bunch of rich, old men would go for the ironic comedy style or approve of the anti-capitalist sentiment of the whole thing, but the beauty of The Lego Movie's animation alone warranted that nomination.
Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the dashing young princes. Follow Brogan on twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion: @BroganMorris1
